”Huh? This city has no library?” Alex asked a man with surprise. He had been asking for directions to the library when he learned about that.

”No, Fellow Daoist. But I hear the next city has one,” the man told Alex.

”Next city? The Raingoard city?” Alex asked.

”Yes, that’s the one. It’s only a hundred or so kilometers away,” the man said.

”Thank you,” Alex said and left. That took away one of the things he wanted to do.

’Does this town seriously not have a library?’ he thought. Well, now that he thought about it, not every town had a library.

Even the city he considered his home now, the Scarlet city didn’t have a library.

’Well, I guess I will have to go read some alchemy book in the Alchemists guild now,’ he thought. He wanted to learn more about the land, but it seemed it would have to wait until a while longer.

So, Alex walked towards the Alchemists guild that which he knew the direction of.

-Silverleaf Branch of Alchemists guild-

’They do have a branch in every city, don’t they?’ he thought. He turned around and looked at the formation guild too, but that one would have to come later.

He walked into the Alchemists guild and walked directly to the left side of the guild. Fortunately, the interior of the guild was the same as the one in the last city.

He arrived next to another Alchemist who was also looking at the board.

He ignored that person and placed his badge on the carving. Soon, a whole load of information entered his brain, regarding the many missions.

Alex looked for a good one and chose it before walking away. He didn’t try to look for anyone and only focused on himself.

Once again, he started making pills for as long as he could. Each mission gave him 2 or 3 sets of ingredients, and Alex spent the whole time turning all the ingredients into pills.

In total, he made about 10 different pills by the time it was evening. He could’ve certainly gone for a lot more of them, but unfortunately, his swollen meridians didn’t let him do that.

Once it was evening, he decided to take a bit of break and went to the front of the guild for the receptions.

”Hello, can you tell me if there are any of these ingredients available for me to purchase?” Alex asked.

The girl looked through the list and crosschecked it. “We have Hotfeather Eagle’s tail feathers, sir Alchemist,” the girl said.

”The tail feathers? Only?” Alex asked. He had just bought that last time too.

”Unfortunately yes,” the girl said.

Alex scratched his head. ‘Was finding ingredients this hard normally? Have I been terribly spoiled by the northern forest?’ he wondered.

”Would you like me to look if there are any places with these ingredients?” she asked.

”Eh? You mean through the other cities, with the other guilds?” Alex asked.

”Yes, sir Alchemist. However… it will cost you 2 True spirit stones per ingredient sear—”

”Do it!” Alex said aggressively. “Sorry about that. Can you please do it?”

”Of course,” the girl said and started searching for the ingredients throughout the entire empire.

At the same time, Alex took the opportunity to write some more ingredients, which were the Saint rank versions of the untranslated ones.

The girl searched for those as well.

In the end, she came up with a lot of information, which she transferred onto a talisman and handed to Alex.

Alex paid the 28 or so True Spirit stones, after discount, that had cost him to search the ingredients, and went to a seat on the side of the hall to look through it.

As he went through the locations, the names of the cities, as well as their placement of them on the map, popped up in his head.

He could find almost every ingredient somewhere throughout the entire empire. Most concentrated of them was the capital, which had almost all of the ingredients, including the Blood Spirit Ginger.

”So it’s all in the capital huh?” he thought. He wanted to leave immediately, but the capital was about 8700 kilometers away. That was not something he could reach by rushing there.

’Damn, how exactly do people travel such long distances in this empire?’ he wondered.

He decided he would use the boat he had with him. If he handed it to Shen Jing, with his Saint realm Qi, it would certainly fly at the speed of light.

He went back up to the lady at the reception to ask if it was possible to purchase the ginseng from here and receive it at the Alchemist guild in the capital.

”Are you sure, sir Alchemist?” the girl asked him with a weird look. Alex couldn’t understand what was so weird about that.

”Of course,” Alex said.

The girl still seemed to have her doubt as she didn’t immediately turn toward the system in front of her.

Instead, she said, “Sir Alchemist, you do know this is a Saint rank alchemy ingredient right?”

”Yes,” Alex said as a sense of foreboding fell upon him. He thought for a second and asked, “What’s the price of the Blood Spirit Ginseng?”

”It’s 3400 True Spirit stones or 34 Saint spirit stones,” the girl said with a wry face.

”What?!” Alex burst out in dumbfoundedness. Never in his life would he had imagined a Saint rank ingredient to cost so much money.

However, when he thought about it, it was a Saint rank ingredient. Slowly his thoughts returned to the ingredients he had in his storage bag.

There were at least 20 different Saint ingredients in there. He could make a lot of money if he sold those ingredients, wouldn’t he? They would be enough to buy this Blood Spirit ginseng many times over.

’NO!’ Alex thought and shook his head. “I guess I won’t be buying it then. Thank you.”

He had already learned his lesson regarding selling something he owned that was out of his league.

Zexi had nearly killed him last time when he was only a True Master realm cultivator. If Alex sold Saint rank ingredients, he would bring the wrath of Saint realm cultivators from all over the empire.

’Until I have entered the Saint realm, I cannot touch these ingredients or reveal it to the world,’ he thought.

After that, Alex took a job that required him to make a bulk of pills at 25% and went back to the alchemy room.

For the next 8 hours, he stayed inside, doing nothing but making pills. Or so, he wanted people to think.

What he really did was make pills for 2 hours, and spent the rest of the 6 hours simply cultivating.

Alex went as far as splitting the pills to increase his speed at making the pills since they were only 25%.

After finishing making the pill, he kept the ingredients and instead cultivated for 6 hours, interchanging between the two methods every hour.

By the time it was time to leave, he felt his meridians swell a little less. After he went through this a few more times, he would probably have to remake the sun again to inflate it once more.

Alex went back to making some more pills for the missions and after morning arrived, he went to the back half of the guild where a small library was kept.

Alex entered the room and saw that it wasn’t even a full shelf. Even then, he was at least getting something to learn.

’I wonder if the knowledge regarding alchemy in this empire is any different,’ Alex wondered.

He tried to pick out a book, but there was some sort of seal here as well. ‘Do I have to pay?’ he thought. He wouldn’t have expected to have to pay for something as simple as a book called ‘Basics of Alchemy.’

After a minute or two of trying to pay, Alex couldn’t figure out how to go about it.

That was when a person came by and placed his medallion in the air in front of the shelf, and the shelf opened up to allow a book to be taken.

Alex nearly slapped himself in annoyance for not figuring out something so simple.

He took out the basic alchemy book and got to reading. It wasn’t long before he realized that the book truly was for the basics of basics regarding Alchemy.

’Why the hell is something so simple in an Alchemists guild?’ he wondered. ‘Do newbies need to continuously refer to this book to see if they forgot something?’

That felt correct in his mind, so he went on to take out another book.

The books available were on different subjects. Such as Energy theory, the importance of a cauldron, the difference in types of energy released based on the speed of the ingredient, and such.

Alex didn’t feel these information to be extremely important to him, so he kept searching for some book he might not have knowledge of.

That was when he came across 3 books with interesting titles, about something he had never thought about before.

Alex looked at the first of the book and used his medallion to bring it out.

Once it was in his hand, he read the title of the book.

”Side Effects of Consuming too many pills.”